The Accidental Blog | The Accidental Mind | David J. Linden

A Perfectly Nice Monogamous Relationship With This Ravioli

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:22:57 -0400

I was in L.A. last week and was lucky to have dinner with my old hometown pal Attila Giri. She writes a witty and spirited account of our meal and conversation that's way more interesting than anything I could scribble.

Ancient Synaptic History

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:27:27 -0400

Oslo, 1964. A malaise had settled over the community of neurobiologists investigating the biological substrates of memory. Obviously, memories can last for the lifetime of an animal. Thus it was expected that experience should produce long-lasting changes in neuronal function to underlie the memory trace. The best guess for the aspect of neuronal function changed by experience was synaptic transmission. Synaptic transmission is the fundamental mode of rapid communication between neurons and so is central to information processing in the brain. The dominant hypothesis was that particular patterns of neuronal stimulation delivered to neurons with electrodes (thereby mimicking actual experience in the world) would produce long-lasting changes in the strength of synaptic transmission. The problem at the root of the malaise: no evidence whatsoever for this postulated mechanism. The longest-lasting changes that had been recorded persisted for only a minute or two— a time scale that was totally insufficient for memory storage.

In 1964, Terje Lomo was a doctor in the Norwegian navy, soon to be discharged. On leave in Oslo to look for a job, he bumped into the neurophysiologist Per Andersen, walking down the street. After an animated conversation about synapses and neurons, he agreed to join Andersen’s laboratory as a Ph.D. student. At that time, recordings of synaptic function in the brain were, for a variety of technical reasons, very difficult. Most recordings of neuron-to-neuron synapses had been performed in the spinal cord (these yielded the aforementioned brief facilitation). Andersen had developed techniques to record synaptic transmission in a brain region called the hippocampus, buried deep within the temporal lobe of anesthetized rabbits. Lomo took up these techniques and began to probe the properties of hippocampal synapses. In 1965, he had the first hints that repeated stimulation (120 pulses at 12 pulses/second), could cause synapses to persistently increase their strength. However, it was not until the Fall of 1968, when Lomo was joined by Tim Bliss, a visiting British scientist with an interest in memory storage, that things really took off. In their first experiment together they used a design in which a single test pulse was delivered to measure the synaptic strength. After recording a series of stable baseline responses, a “conditioning stimulus” consisting of 300 pulses at 20 pulses/second was delivered. Following several repetitions of this conditioning stimulus, the response to the test pulse was larger, reflecting an increase in synaptic strength. Most importantly, this increase persisted, not for a minute or two, but for many hours—as long as the recording could be maintained. That day in 1968 marked the first real glimpse of a memory storage mechanism in the brain and began the modern era of memory research, in which memory is analyzed at a cellular and molecular level.

Lomo and Bliss called their new phenomenon long-lasting potentiation or LLP. However, as often happens in science, this name didn't stick, and it is now known as long-term synaptic potentiation or LTP (Bliss once remarked that the expression “LLP” didn't catch on because it made the speaker sound as if he were in need of urgent assistance). Starting in 1970’s, LTP created tremendous excitement among memory researchers not only because of its duration, but also because of it relation to a well-known neurological case.

H.M. was a patient who underwent surgery to control otherwise intractable epilepsy. The surgery, which involved bilateral resection of his hippocampus and some surrounding tissue, cured the epilepsy, but left him with two profound memory impairments: he could no longer recall facts and events for a period of 1 – 2 years prior to the surgery, and, even stranger, he could no longer form any new memories for facts and events. Thus, the hippocampus was already implicated in memory storage. At that time, the idea was that LTP (and its later-discovered mirror twin, long-term synaptic depression or LTD) were rare phenomena, that would only be found at a few specialized synapses in the brain with particular roles in memory storage. That has not turned out to be the case at all: LTP and LTD are nearly ubiquitous properties of synapses and can be found everywhere from the spinal cord to the most recently evolved portions of the frontal cortex, and almost every brain region in between. Even the most ancient parts of our brain, that we share with fish and lizards, regions that control basic functions like spinal reflexes, breathing, temperature control and the sleep/wake cycle, have the LTP and LTD and hence the capacity to be modified by experience.

Every Dog Will Have His Day

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:45:25 -0400

Not Photoshopped! This is the real current issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature. Layout artists have all the fun.

via Blog Around The Clock

Okavango Delta, August 2008

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:48:10 -0400

Aw c'mon honey-- it's ragweed season!

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:36:04 -0400

From the journal Medical Hypotheses, comes the ground breaking new article: "Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males" by Sina Zarrintan of Tabriz Medical University, Iran.

"As it is seen, ejaculation can be used as a potential treatment of nasal congestion because its emission phase provides a sympathetic stimulation and subsequent vasoconstriction and nasal decongestion. Also, the refractory period serves as a sympathetic reservoir and maintains the decongestive state for a considerable while. This method does not wish to have the adverse effects of pharmaceutical decongestants because it is a physiologic stimulation of the sympathetic system in the body. According to the current idea, sexual intercourse or masturbation is proposed in the cases of nasal congestion in mature men. It can be done time-to-time to alleviate the congestion and the patient can adjust the number of intercourses or masturbations depending on the severity of the symptoms."

Ah....ah.....ah......choo!! Hey, baby.

via Neurotopia 2.0

The discovery of brain pleasure circuits

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:26:31 -0400

Montréal, 1954.

Fortunately, Peter Milner and James Olds didn’t have perfect aim with their electrodes. While postdoctoral fellows at McGill University under the direction of the renowned psychologist Donald Hebb, Olds and Milner were conducting experiments which involved implanting electrodes deep into the brains of rats. The implanting surgery was done under anesthesia and the electrodes, two of them, half a millimeter apart, were then cemented to the skull. After a few days to recover from the surgery, the rats were fine. Long, flexible wires were attached to the electrodes at one end and to a electrical stimulator at the other, to allow for discrete activation of the specific brain region where the tips of the electrodes had come to rest. One particular Fall day, Olds and Milner were testing a rat in which they had attempted to target a structure called the midbrain reticular system. Located at the midline of the brain, at the point where the base of the brain tapers to form the brainstem, this region had previously been shown by another lab to control sleeping and waking cycles. But in this surgery, the electrode had gone astray and it wound up, still at the midline, but in somewhat more forward position in the brain, a region called the medial forebrain bundle.

The rat was placed in a large box with corners labeled A, B, C, and D and was allowed to explore freely. But, whenever the rat went to corner A, the experimenter pressed a button to deliver a brief, mild electrical shock through the implanted electrodes. After a few jolts, the rat kept returning to corner A and finally fell asleep in a different location. The next day, however, the rat seemed even more interested in corner A. Olds and Milner were excited: they believed that they has found a brain region that, when stimulated, provoked curiosity. However, further experiments on this same rat soon proved that not to be the case. By this time, the rat had a acquired a habit of returning often to corner A to be stimulated. The experimenters then tried to coax the rat away from corner A: they would give a shock every time the rat made a step in the direction of corner B. This worked all too well—within 5 minutes, the rat was in corner B. Further investigation revealed that this rat could be directed to any location within the box with well-timed brain shocks—brief ones to guide the rat to the target location and more sustained ones once there.

Many years earlier, the psychologist B.F. Skinner had devised the operant conditioning chamber or “Skinner Box” in which a lever press by an animal triggered either a reinforcing stimulus such as delivery of food or water, or a punishing stimulus like a painful footshock. Olds and Milner soon adapted the chamber so that a lever press would deliver direct brain stimulation through the implanted electrodes. What resulted was perhaps the most dramatic experiment in the history of behavioral neuroscience—rats would press the lever as many as 7,000 times per hour to stimulate their brains. They weren’t stimulating a “curiosity center” at all-- this was a reward circuit, the activation of which was much more powerful than any natural stimulus. A series of amazing experiments revealed that rats preferred reward circuit stimulation to food (even when they were hungry) and water (even when they were thirsty). Self-stimulating male rats would ignore a female in heat and would repeatedly cross footshock-delivering flood grids to reach the lever. Female rats would abandon their newborn nursing pups to continually press the lever. Some rats would self-stimulate 2,000 times per hour for 24 hours, to the exclusion of all other activities. They had to be unhooked from the apparatus to prevent starvation!

Further work was done to systematically vary the placement of the electrode tips and thereby map the reward circuits of the brain. These experiments revealed that stimulation of the upper surface of the brain, the neocortex, where sensory and motor processing reside, produced no reward—the rats continued to press the lever at chance levels. However, deep in the brain, there was not just a single discrete location underlying reward. Rather, a group of interconnected structures, all located at the base of the brain and distributed along the midline comprised the reward circuit. These included a variety of locations with names like the ventral tegmental area, amygdala, medial forebrain bundle and septum as well as portions of the thalamus and hypothalamus. Not all of these areas were equally rewarding. Stimulation in some parts of this “medial forebrain reward circuit” could support self stimulation rates of 7,000 times/hour while others only elicited 200 times/hour.

It’s hard to imagine now, but at the time, the notion that motivational or reward mechanisms could be localized to certain brain regions or circuits was highly controversial. The dominant theory, which had held sway for many years, was that excitation of the brain was always punishing and that learning and the development of behavior could be explained solely by punishment avoidance. This was called the “drive-reduction hypothesis.” In Olds’ characterization of this theory, “…pain supplies the push and learning based on pain reduction supplies the direction.” There was no need for reward: it was all stick, no carrot. The pioneering experiments of Olds and Milner clearly demolished the punishment-only model in favor of a more comprehensive, hedonistic view that “behavior is pulled forward by pleasure as well as pushed forward by pain” (Olds, 1958). In this way, brain pleasure/reward circuits were revealed as important determinants of behavior.

Thoughts on medial forebrain dopaminergic reward circuits

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:53:12 -0400

"For the bow cannot stand always bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation."

- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

"Pleasure never comes sincere to man; but lent by heaven upon hard usury."

- John Dryden (Edippus, Act 1, Scene 1)

Bangkok, 1989

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:41:28 -0400

The afternoon rains have ended leaving the air briefly free of smog and allowing that distinctive Thai perfume, frangipani with a faint note of sewage, to waft over the shiny streets. It’s the early evening. I hail a tuk-tuk, a 3-wheel motorcycle taxi, and hop aboard. My young driver has an entrepreneurial smile as his turns around.

“So….you want girl?”

“No.”

“I see.”

Long pause, eyebrows slowly raised. “You want boy!”

“Uh, no.”

Longer pause. Sound of engine sputtering at idle. “You want ladyboy?”

“No.”

“I got cheap cigarettes…Johnnie Walker...”

“No thanks.”

Voice lowered. “You want ganja?”

“No.”

“Coke?”

“No”

“Ya baa (methamphetamine tablets)?”

“Nope.”

A whisper now. “Heroin?”

“No.”

Voice raised back to normal. “I can take you to cockfight. You can gamble!”

“I’ll pass.”

Just a little bit irritated now. “So, farang, what you want?”

“Prik noo,” I respond. “Those little mouse shit peppers. I want some good, spicy dinner.”

As we tear through the streets to the restaurant, blasting through puddles, I’m left wondering- aside from various shades of illegality, what do these offers have in common? What is it, exactly, that makes a vice?

Boulders Penguin Colony, South Africa

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:50:24 -0400

Okavango Delta, Botswana, August 2008

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:32:30 -0400

Brash and Breezy

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:01:35 -0400

Noted psychiatrist Lawrence Hartmann, M.D., writes the following in his review of The Accidental Mind in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"This thoughtful neuroscientist’s book about brain evolution, structure, and function, which places refreshing emphasis on some relatively messy and ad hoc qualities of brain evolution and on the inefficiencies of brain design and function, seems to me significantly flawed by its frequently brash and breezy style. For example, the last words of the introduction are “let’s roll.” The author is fond of words such as “downer” and “cool.”

So true, dude.

Yakkity-Yak

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:56:01 -0400

For those of you who just can't get enough of me running my mouth on the topic of brain evolution, here's a podcast from the American Physiological Society aka The Home Team. It's episode 12 of the "Life Lines" series and it also features kewl nooz on athletic blood doping and fetal alcohol syndrome.

Perspicacity, Savannah Georgia, July 2008

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:31:06 -0400

Ford Fiesta of the Mind

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:47:03 -0400

Phil Hogan, writing in The Observer (UK), says he's made it up to Chapter 5 in The Accidental Mind and offers this useful summary of the book so far...

"Now, where was I? Ah, the book, The Accidental Mind by David J Linden. It's brilliant, I'm sure, though the more I read the less I know. I gather from his general thesis that brains are not as brilliantly engineered as we like to think. We might have a hundred billion cells going at it round the clock but they're constantly misfiring or getting the wrong end of the stick. Brains are more Heath Robinson than Bill Gates, having evolved over the aeons simply by growing new pipes and cables on top of the crappy old ones.

And while ordinary electrical signals happily travel down copper wire at almost the speed of light (669 million mph), brain signals go as fast as a Ford Fiesta. Not only that, but you have to imagine a Ford Fiesta with stuff falling out of the boot. And - this is the best bit - to get from one cell to the next you have to jump out of your Ford Fiesta and swim with your message across a synaptic channel of neurological gloop before getting in another hopeless Ford Fiesta at the other side, air hissing out of tyres, wing mirrors hanging off. That's how high tech it is. It's a wonder we can find our way to the bus stop."

Monkey See

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:08:02 -0400

So, I wrote a "welcome editorial" to mark the beginning of my term as Editor in Chief for the Journal of Neurophysiology. In it, I briefly laid out a few points-- what I liked about JN and what I thought could be productively changed. I also preached a bit about author and referee behavior. I didn't think that any of the ideas therein were particularly provocative-- they echo the sentiments that I hear from my colleagues every day at lunchtime. Nonetheless, the editorial seems to have sparked some interesting and productive debate and commentary at the science blogs DrugMonkey and The Junction Potential.

Panacea, Florida, July 2008

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:01:06 -0400

In Germany, before the wars

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:50:12 -0400

Some relative of mine pressed these flowers in a photo envelope in Frankfurt, sometime around 1905. I wish I knew the story behind them.

Dang

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:58:34 -0400

Apparently, The Accidental Mind has won the Silver Medal in the "Science" category at the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. I didn't even know I was entered and only learned about the award through the dubious practice of self-googling (which is prohibited in many of the world's religious traditions).

"By the facial hair of my ancestors..."

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:02:31 -0400

It sounds like the beginning of an elaborate curse, doesn't it? I recently uncovered a huge stash of old family photos, which I'm just starting to examine. I dig the tonsorial splendor of these fine fellows, circa 1900.

Decapitation Averted (For Now)

Wed, 21 May 2008 21:09:41 -0400

On Monday, I unlocked the door to my office and found the place totally trashed. My scanner was smashed to bits, books were strewn everywhere, my desk and chair were crushed. My first thought was, "Damn. Those creationists who've been sending me all the death threats since The Accidental Mind was published managed to get in here." Then, I realized that all the mayhem resulted from a single action- the huge wall-mounted cabinets full of books had broken loose and had come crashing down (one would have neatly bisected my cranium, had I been sitting at my desk.) Examination of the cabinets revealed that, back in 2002, the contractors had failed to secure the cabinets to the studs, relying solely upon flimsy drywall anchors, thereby saving themselves about 30 min of labor and 50 cents worth of screws.

Neuroscientists Talk Shop

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:58:45 -0400

...is the name of a new podcast series from The University of Texas at San Antonio. These are roundtable discussions with UTSA Neurobiology faculty and a different guest each week. Recent guests include Linda Overstreet-Wadiche, Mario Capecchi, John Lisman and yours truly. These podcasts are intended for an audience of neuroscientists and so they get into the nitty-gritty fairly quickly.

A Kludge By Any Other Name

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:21:05 -0400

From the promotional material for Gary Marcus' new book Kluge:

"Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature."

Damn, that's clever. I wish I had thought of that. From Chapter 1 of The Accidental Mind:

"It is the widely assumed that since the mind is in the brain, and this is a great achievement, that the design and function of the brain must then be elegant and efficient. In short, it is imagined by many that the brain is well-engineered. Nothing could be further from the truth. The brain is, to use one of my favorite words, a kludge (pronounced ‘klooj’), a design that is inefficient, inelegant and unfathomable, but which nevertheless works. More evocatively, in the words of the military historian Jackson Granholm, a kludge is “an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole”. What I hope to show here is that at every level of brain organization, from regions and circuits to cells and molecules, the brain is an inelegant and inefficient agglomeration of stuff, which nonetheless works surprisingly well. The brain is not an optimized generic problem solving machine. It was not designed at once, by a genius inventor, on a blank piece of paper. Rather, it is a very peculiar edifice which reflects millions of years of evolutionary history. In many cases, the brain has adopted solutions to particular problems in the distant past which have remained over time and have been recycled for other uses or have severely constrained the possibilities for further change. What’s important about this point as applied to the brain is not merely that it challenges the notion of optimized design. Rather, appreciation of the quirky engineering of the brain can provide insights into some of the deepest and most particularly human aspects of experience, both in day-to-day behavior and in cases of injury and disease."

So, I had a good laugh today, when reading a review of Marcus' book in Nature by Sandra Aamodt which included the following.

"In Kluge, psychologist Gary Marcus presents a lively tour of the shortcomings of human minds and concludes that evolution has left us with something of a mess. In an argument reminiscent of David Linden's The Accidental Mind, Marcus makes his case by describing cognitive difficulties, including false beliefs, linguistic ambiguity, impulsiveness and mental illness."

Yeah. Sumbitch eatin' mah lunch.

Neuropharmacology In The Real World

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:02:35 -0400

"Phil was probably passed out somewhere, enjoying his dead father's legacy. I found myself wishing I had a loved one who would die and leave me their barbiturates, but I couldn't think of anyone who'd ever loved me that much. My uncle had already promised his to the mail lady."

Donald Ray Pollock, "Bactine"

from his superb collection of stories, Knockemstiff

I love cranky writers

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:52:40 -0400

"Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody ever gets over anything."

--Martin Amis, House of Meetings

Chuck Close Tells It Like It Is

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:34:36 -0400

"I don't deal with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work."

"Chuck Close: Process and Collaboration" Exhibit

DIY Brain Surgery

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:51:05 -0400

The Times of London reports that British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh has been visiting Kiev in the Ukraine, twice a year, in order to assist and train a Ukrainian colleague. In London, Marsh would use an expensive (30,000 pound) specialized medical drill to create holes on the skull. But, due to lack of funds in Kiev, he and his colleague have made do with a handheld Bosch drill favored by home hobbyists. Cost: 30 pounds. If this cheapskate solution becomes known in the USA, I'm afraid that the insurance companies will reimburse for nothing else.

A Good Yarn

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:17:44 -0500

Yesterday, I spoke at a conference entitled "Law of the Body: Implications of Medical Science on Legal Decision Making" at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon. One of the other speakers was Bill Harbaugh, an economist and neuroscientist from the University of Oregon. In addition to doing cool experiments in which he and his colleagues image the brains of women in the process of paying taxes and making charitable donations, he is also the curator of the online "Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art" which features this lovely dissection by Karen Norberg.

7 Train from Queens, February 24, 2008

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:22:32 -0500

Intelligent Design Goes to the Movies

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:23:40 -0500

My old pal Attila Girl is a fan of the upcoming film from Ben Stein entitled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" which was recently screend at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in Washington D.C. I haven't seen the film, but a longish preview is available online. It purports to tell the story of how academics at American universities are suppressing discussion of Intelligent design creationism, which they claim to be a legitimate scientific theory.

Now, I don't rant that much, but every once in a while, one is called for. So here it goes.

Hostility to evolutionary biology has been a feature of certain parts of the American political and religious landscape for many years, although it has been much less of an issue in most other countries. Most religious denominations and indeed most Christian leaders have made their peace with the basic tenets of evolution: that all present life on Earth derives from a common 3.5-billion-year-old ancestor, and that living things change slowly through a random process of genetic mutation coupled with natural selection. Indeed, Pope John Paul II made this point in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences entitled “Truth Cannot Contradict the Truth.” He said, “Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical [a previous statement from Pope Pius XII in 1950 that said there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith], new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.”

But fundamentalist Christians adhere to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis and have for many years sought to have this biblical view taught in American public schools. When these attempts were repeatedly banned by the courts on the basis of the Constitutional separation of church and state, a new strategy was born called “scientific creationism.” A group of fundamentalist American Christians attempted to claim that careful examination of the geological and biological record supports the story of Genesis—that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that all species were created simultaneously, and that mass extinctions seen in the fossil record were caused by the Noah’s flood. But this argument also failed. Not only was it impossible to marshal the evidence to support these claims scientifically, but, in the words of the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, “American courts clearly spied clerical collars beneath the lab coats” and struck down teaching of so-called scientific creationism in schools.

In the 1990s yet another strategy was developed. Recognizing that explicit references to religion would always be rejected by the courts, a group of fundamentalist Christian academics took a step back and sought to devise a theory that would challenge evolutionary biology but would appear to be scientifically reasonable. This movement, dubbed “intelligent design,” does not try to provide support for such obviously scientifically untenable points as a 6,000-year-old Earth, Noah’s flood, or other aspects of the Genesis story. In fact, when talking to the world at large, the supporters of intelligent design are careful not to mention God or religion at all. Rather, they claim that living creatures are just too intricate and clever to have arisen by random mutation and selection. These forms, they say, are too elegant and too complex to attribute to anything other than a very clever designer. Therefore, an unspecified intelligent designer must be at work. In this way of thinking, gradual change of living things is admitted and the fossil record and the genetic relationships between living organisms can be accounted for, but the engine driving this change is challenged.

The crux of the matter is this: intelligent design purports to be a scientific theory, but it isn’t. Pope John Paul II hit one out of the ballpark when he offered the following definition. “A theory is a metascientific elaboration distinct from the results of observation but consistent with them. By means of it, a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory’s validity depends on whether or not it can be falsified. It is continually tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought” (address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 23, 1996).

Evolution is a true scientific theory. It can be falsified by particular findings, such as a hominid skeleton dated to the Jurassic Era. Intelligent design is not. It rests on a subjective inference of design that is not subject to a falsifying experimen or observation. It is not surprising that despite lavish funding from certain religious and political groups, the intelligent design movement has provided no fieldwork or laboratory experimentation to bolster its claims. Yes, books are written, papers are presented and published, and even mathematical models are constructed. All the trappings of science are there, but there is no science at the core.

Is the goal of the intelligent design movement really to do legitimate science to challenge the theory of evolution, or is its goal merely to craft a sufficiently watered-down view of creationism to appear scientific and thereby gain a placeat the debating table and fly under the radar of the courts? Although intelligent design proponents are careful not to mention religion in public hearings or debates, quite a different picture emerges when they are addressing fundamentalist Christian audiences. Phillip E. Johnson of the University of California at Berkeley, one of the founders of the intelligent design movement, said, “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools” (American Family Radio, January 10, 2003). William Dembski of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, another well-known intelligent design proponent, has stated, “Intelligent design readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory” (Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, July 1999).

In its public face, intelligent design has been cleverly crafted to appear as a legitimate scientific theory with no ties to a specific religious agenda. This gives political cover to politicians and school board members who can adopt a tone of fairness in saying, “Let’s present our students with both sides of this fascinating scientific debate.”

Intelligent design creationism is a perfectly legitimate topic of academic discussion, but not in science class or in scientific journals. It should be taught in comparative religion class alongside accounts of the Judeo-Christian Biblical flood, Native American origin tales, astrology, healing with crystals and other expressions of faith.

Cheeseburger In a Can

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:26:35 -0500

From Germany comes the latest in backpacker cuisine, the cheeseburger in a can. A steal at 3.95 euros.

To paraphrase Michael Pollan...

"Eat beef. Processed in a factory. With lots of packaging."

Update: they also sell dehydrated wine. I swear. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Narrative creation in the brain

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:32:44 -0500

I say... Our sensory world is anything but pure and truthful. Built and transformed by evolutionary history into a very peculiar edifice, it responds to only one particular slice of possible sensory space. Our brains then process this sensory stream to extract certain kinds of information, ignore other kinds of information, and bind the whole thing together into an ongoing story that is understandable and useful. Furthermore, by the time we are aware of sensations, they have evoked emotional responses that are largely beyond our control and that have been used to plan actions and understand the actions of others.

Joe Sayers, as usual, gets to the point more directly.

Akumal, Mexico, 2008

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:33:36 -0500

In my family, when we get our teeth into a joke, we don't like to let go until it's good and dead.

Kangaroo farts and global warming

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:04:07 -0500

A research group in Australia has determined that, unlike those of sheep and cattle, kangaroo farts don't contain methane, a major contributor to global warming. The kangaroo stomach is host to bacteria that aid digestion, and do so with great efficiency, but don't produce methane as a byproduct. Now, efforts are underway to isolate the bug or bugs responsible and then use them to innoculate the digestive systems of cows and sheep in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Another group of Australian scientists have proposed a different solution: raise less beef and lamb and eat more kangaroo meat instead. And, no, it doesn't taste like chicken.

via news.com.au

Not Photoshopped

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:18:47 -0500

This amazing little dude looks like a Pokémon, but is really a long-eared jerboa, an endangered nocturnal hopping rodent from the Gobi Desert.

via BBC News.

Versus

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:54:04 -0500

I've received a lot of interesting mail since The Accidental Mind was published, but nothing quite like this dollop of haute-geek poetry by Dr. Hilton Stowell of Milledgeville, Georgia.

Kuntry Ham Kludge

In Harvard where the Mind is an Illusion

There's a Kludge of computational confusion

About neurons in the brain

Being mainly in the rain

Of Silly Con Soft plain

While the rest are just an NPG intrusion

Now an Accidental Mind

Was a radiative find

For peripatetic cooling

By Aristotelian ruling,

Where cognitive emotion

Was by cardiac promotion:

Neocortex was an airconditioning rind

Nobel Monod had his day

La Nécessité to play

With Le Hasard in the say

And no time for epigenetic restitution

Of Lamarckian Onward-Upward resolution.

In 20th c. before Translational Revolution

Uncle Syd described a tinkering constitution

For his Dear Old Evo Devo Dan the I Kin Fixit Man

Spanner in backpocket all set to tinker-knockit;

So what's there left to do that's new for 2052?

Zip, Nada, Zilch, Goose-egg

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:31:31 -0500

The New York Times released its list of "100 Notable Books of 2007" a few days ago. Lots of good stuff there. Novels by Ha Jin, Richard Russo and Haruki Murakami. Stories by William Trevor and Alice Munro. History, Biography, Politics. How about Science? Well, no. Out of a selection of 100 books published this year, the number of "notable" science books was zero. Go team.

A New Low

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:35:19 -0500

A few days ago, I was getting on a plane for Burlington, Vermont and I had the depressing realization that the novel I was carrying was the same one I had carried on two prior airplane trips stretching back to October 11. Now the book, Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, is 600+ pages, but it's actually a very fast and fun read and would be consumed in great lusty bites if I weren't so totally distracted. Today, I'm gonna finish that sucker.

I'm being rewarded with wonderful prose, like this snippet. In the story, it is the musings of a conflicted CIA agent in Vietnam in 1968. It could just as easily be retitled "A Scientist's Prayer"

Right at the heart of my ability to grasp the truth, I want to be paralyzed

I want to swoon

I want my mind to fail before the truth

I want the truth to flow over me only as something sensual and as nothing

else.

Want it to wet me- to be real, to be a thing

Tree of Smoke

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:56:46 -0500

Tree of Smoke is the title of a kick-ass-wonderful new novel by Denis Johnson. Set in a CIA Psy Ops Group in Vietnam in 1967, it offers this nugget of neurophilosophy:

"Something's warping you," Jimmy told the lieutenant. "Maybe it's your perception of how the brass will see you-- but they're not seeing you at all right now, so it's a perception of a nonperception, man, which is a perception of nothing, which is nothing, man."

For this, I'll cross-dress

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:30:45 -0400

This stunning brain-inspired handbag, designed by Jun Takashi, is da bomb. Unfortunately, I don't have the shoes to go with it.

via coolhunting.com

Cannabinoid receptor comix

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:32:05 -0400

from the amazing Joe Sayers.

Is it a synapse?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:26:12 -0400

A map of the Tokyo Metro? Psychedelic dog vomit? No, it's God and the Devil Argue Over the Details by the visionary digital artist and Honorary Neuroscientist Kevin Mack. I've just ordered a copy of this print for my office wall and I'm totally psyched about it.

The Brain is Real Simple (Learn How to Knit One at Home in Your Spare Time!)

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:29:40 -0400

So, I know that I've hit the big time now that I'm featured in the November issue of Real Simple magazine. Did they want my great recipe for Moroccan Lamb Tagine? My helpful hints for getting rid of stubborn stains using only natural ingredients? No. They wanted to talk about brain activation in memory and dreaming.

From the article by Kristyn Kusek Lewis:

"When scientists do brain scans on subjects during REM sleep they find that the visual center of the brain, the dominant area that processes all the new information people encounter while awake, is shut down. The visual memory center, though-- the part of your brain that stores images from the past, like what your childhood bedroom looked like-- is in overdrive. This indicates that all the images we "see" during our dreams are being pulled from our memories, says David Linden, who is also the author of The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory Dreams and God (Belknap, $26)."

Boo!

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:34:59 -0400

eros. laore

The bottom version is by Natalie Linden, age 10.

Deathswitch.com

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:22:22 -0400

Deathswitch.com is website that offers an interesting and unique service. From their description:

"Imagine that you die with computer passwords in yur head, leaving coworkers without access to critical files. Imagine that your loved ones cannot find your bank accounts, or that you die with a secret that that you longed to reveal in your lifetime. A deathswitch is an automated system that prompts you for your password to make sure you are still alive. When you do not enter your password for some [user determined] period of time, the system prompts you again several times. With no reply, the computer deduces that you are dead or critically disabled and your pre-scipted mesaages are automatically emailed to those named by you."

Then, on another page, called "Uses", they really lay it out:

"Have the last word in an argument."

The Electronic Orifice Orchestra

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:10:05 -0400

File this one under "New Frontiers In Biofeedback." The musicians of the Electronic Orifice Orchestra insert sensors of muscular contraction into their naughty bits and then use signals from these sensors to modulate synthesizers, drum machines and the like. And, no, to my knowledge, they don't cover "Mr. Blue Sky." Although, that would be kinda cool.

via wired.com

The Elevator in my Shanghai Hotel...

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:22:55 -0400

...has a sign which announces the following (as an ad for their spa).

"Foot soaking in Springtime will strengthen Yang and reinforce vital energy. In Summer, it will dispel disease caused by heat and dampness. In Autumn, it will lubricate the intestines and in Winter, it will warm the pubic region."

Well, I'm sold. Dude, sign me up.

Shanghai, September, 2007

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:16:24 -0400

Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo, September, 2007

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:56:10 -0400

Puff piece!

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:40:16 -0400

Every author needs an ego-boosting puff piece once in a while. Mine comes from the home team, aka Johns Hopkins Magazine.

El Dorado Canyon, Colorado, August, 2007

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:42:06 -0400

Blue Lake, Colorado, August, 2007

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:23:00 -0400